Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that George Bush recently got some encouraging news from one of his biggest critics, General Barry McCaffery:
Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who served as President Clinton's drug czar and has been sharply critical of the Bush administration's conduct of the war, recently returned from a trip to Iraq.
He concluded: "The foreign jihadist fighters have been defeated as a strategic and operational threat to creation of an Iraqi government."
Kelly's article outlines the late misfortunes of al-Qaeda in Iraq and points out that their most effective weapon against the Iraqis, the suicide bomber, is a dwindling asset which, by its nature, is a non-renewable resource. In Kelly's view al-Qaeda is likely to have a diminishing role to play in the insurgency in Iraq. It's an interesting column.